TLDR: I’m changing the name of my Latin American recruiting company from Jules to South.
Here’s why and how I thought about the process.
Why The Name Jules Initially?
I covered the backstory before on the zig-zagging and experimentation to arrive at our current Latin American recruiting and staffing business.
When I was launching these different business iterations, I just needed a name and a website.
I didn’t want to get bogged down in a whole branding process for something that may never get a customer.
The easiest way to get something up was to duplicate an existing Webflow site I owned and change the name.
Our Verne site had the most applicable format. The name Verne is inspired by the science fiction author Jules Verne.
So I switched the name to Jules and changed the colors up.
That’s all it took to get something in front of potential customers.
Why Change the Name?
Jules was always a placeholder name.
It’s fine. People like it well enough. It never really had any meaning.
It fails the “bar test” to me. You can’t easily yell it across a crowded bar and have someone successfully spell it and search it on Google on the first try.
I always intended to change the name after the company became more defined.
As we are starting to invest in marketing more, I wanted to switch now before we get more established.
A great name that’s memorable and relevant will also supercharge our marketing efforts.
Why South?
I wanted something more memorable and descriptive and that reflects what the business actually does.
A big part of our value proposition to customers is our geographic focus and talent in a shared timezone.
I wanted to reference that. Millions of super-talented and hard-working people are just south of us here in the US.
We do all of Latin America, (Central America and South America), but it is all directionally South of the US.
No one has really owned the South term. I always loved “The North” as a description when I lived in Minnesota as well.
I also liked adjacent terms like neighbor and nearby, but those are more crowded with other startups.
Finally I checked the trademark and general usage of the term and we are all clear there.
It is way faster to do this with chatGPT now. You can download all the relevant records on USPTO.gov, upload them to ChatGPT and then ask questions on it. Magic.
What Domain to Pick?
The reality today is that the one-word .com domains are crazy expensive. Many go well into the six-figures and low-seven figures.
I’d love to buy South.com someday. It’s parked by a domain squatter so it’s possible and likely won’t be grabbed by anyone else for now. If it were owned by Apple or someone like that, I’d be out of luck forever.
I started with a name I liked. I didn’t want to pick something weird just for the domain.
Then, I looked at adding an appealing suffix or prefix for the domain.
I only looked for .com domains. Anything else is weird. Don’t be weird.
With Jules, I went with the suffix of HQ so JulesHQ.com. Verne is HQ as well. Scout is ScoutForPets.com
We went with HireInSouth.com.
I like the call to action. Hire seemed the most applicable to us.
I also bought many similar domains as well because I couldn’t decide.
Now back to building an actual business.